Foliage Propagation Model Development to Support New Communications Concepts

Systems & Technology Research (STR) together with our partner, The Ohio State University ElectroScience Laboratory (OSU/ESL), is pleased to provide this proposal to develop foliage propagation modeling algorithms, measurements and techniques to support new communications concepts. Our innovative approach to this problem will combine efficient computational electromagnetic methods (CEM) that capture the salient foliage scattering phenomenology, analysis of existing measured data, collection of new measured data, and communications systems analyses that exercise the CEM-based model for performance prediction.Our modeling will extend the well-established 4-layer model to a general N-layer model, and within each of the lower foliage layers incorporate a random distribution of tree trunks. We will calibrate our CEM-based model with existing and newly collected data and validate our methodology using full-wave simulation of selected environments. Through rigorous numerical Monte Carlo studies and closed-form analytical techniques, we will derive channel models appropriate for different communications frequency bands. Models will include path loss, delay spread, dispersion and correlation between channels. These studies will reveal optimum communications link designs and coding schemes for a given scenario.